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ari. >> a lot of times these thoughts i have, people say, why don't you keep that in your own mind. you get tonight's last word. >> thanks, ari, have a good >> thanks, ari, have a good night. >> thank you. >>> this is the end of the last word, can you always find me at 6:00 p.m. eastern on the beat with arih hour with brian williams. >>> the day long event that turned nasty and downright ugly at times. he hasn't interfered with, and will protect the mueller investigation. the friend of the president is accused of extortion and blackmail by the richest man on earth. the next possible shutdown is a week from now, what will the president settle for. the worsening crisis in the commonwealth of virginia, the entire state democratic leadership is in trouble. the lieutenant governor now facing grave allegations as the

ari melber" starts right now. ari, you're going buy the book, aren't you? >> journey makes me think of "don't stop believing." also a reasonable song. have a great monday night. >> bye, arithe "national enquirer" might be lobbying on behalf of the saudis that his company asked the doj if

ari, have a good >> thanks, ari, have a good night. >> thank you. >>> this is the end of the last word, can you always find me at 6:00 p.m. eastern on the beat with ari mel better, but right now, it's the 11th hour with brian williams. >>> the day long event that turned nasty and downright ugly at times. he hasn't interfered with, and will protect the mueller investigation. the friend of the president is accused of extortion and blackmail by the richest man on earth. the next possible shutdown is a week from now, what will the president settle for. the worsening crisis in the commonwealth of virginia, the entire state democratic leadership is in trouble. the lieutenant governor now facing grave allegations as the 11th hour gets underway on a friday night. >>> good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 750 of the trump administration, today one of its highest ranking officials was the very first to feel the full force of a highly empowered and at times angry democratic led house of representatives. acting attorney general matthew whitaker spent nearly six hours answering questions from the members of the judiciary com

ari melber" starts right now. ari, you're going buy the book, aren't you? >> journey makes me think of "don't stop believing." also a reasonable song. have a great monday night. >> bye, ari. >>> new reports that trump ally david picker was so concerned that the "national enquirer" might be lobbying on behalf of the saudis that his company asked the doj if they should register as saudi lobbyists. are we saudi lobbyists? also, new links between that story and former trump aides roger stone and carter page. plus, donald trump heading down to beto country in el paso as republicans keep bailing on his wall. and my special report on mueller's attack dog prosecutor andrew weissmann. inside the tactics he uses to make people flip, and what it means for the mueller probe. we have all of that for you on a packed show this monday night. but we begin with new clues about where mueller's investigators are headed. this is not a disclosure that mueller's team wanted to make, the clues we have. but in order to defend their new charges against paul manafort in court, andrew weissmann laid out a key theory that the, quote, heart of mueller's probe is still looking at a potentially illegal deal between russia and trump aides. here is the line that is getting attention. weissmann saying manafort's alleged lies go, quote, very much to the heart of what the special counsel's office is investigating. in "the new york times" reports, those comments indicate mueller's still open probe is pursuing the central question of whether there was some kind of deal between russia and the trump campaign. now this is important because it reveals a mueller prosecutor under oath recently, not way back in the day, but recently saying this is the focus of the probe. we're also hearing more about a mueller-related arrest, maria butina, the russian, who pleaded guilty to asking as an undeclared russian agent. now speaking out from prison about what happened when the fbi raided her home. >> was there pounding on the door? did they yell fbi? >> yes. i was completely shocked. i'm wearing an apron, baking banana bread. that was the picture. >> that was the picture of seemingly normal person baking banana bread. butina is clearly using her words to pursue the same strategy on your screen which roger stone used through his dramatic video leak, trying to draw some sort of sympathy or even outrage over law enforcement tactics, which according to experts look pretty typical. stone could face a ruling this week on whether he will be gagged as mueller's team has requested. meanwhile, the parallel investigations in congress gearing up with democrats in charge. the house intel committee chair making it clear they will follow trump's money even if mueller doesn't. >> if the special counsel hasn't subpoenaed deutsche bank, he can't be doing much of a moneylaundering investigation. that red line has been enforced whether by the deputy or by some other party at the justice department. if we had waited to do any of our investigative work for the mueller investigation worry, have been waiting a year and a half. and we have a separate and independent and important responsibility. and that is to tell the country what happened. >> what happened. i'm joined now by nyu law professor melissa murray and shelby holiday who has been reporting on the mueller probe for from the start for "the wall street journal." good evening. >> good evening. >> what do you think of these clues which a lot of legal experts have been parsing? >> so there is a lot here, all of it speculation at this point. a lot to say about sanctions. a lot the say about crimea and the ukraine and lots to say about russia and trying to get out of the thumb of american sanction. >> when you look at that, when he says at the heart, is that potential overdoing it? or is he saying basically, look, we care more about manafort's lies not just because we're tough and they have that reputation, but because we think he may be lying for ongoing aspects of a deal that could be ongoing collusion? >> that seems to be the implication, that there is more to this than we initially thought, and that is an ongoing deal between manafort and the russian contacts in order to get some kind of push from the trump administration on some of these aspects of the russia relationship. >> it's certainly ongoing because when you look at this transcript, there is still a lot of stuff that is blacked out. things that we aren't allowed to know about, even though the government didn't necessarily want us to know about anything of this. we got some hints, and it's not just about this ukrainian peace plan, which for many is code word for lifting sanction. but it's also about the sharing of polling data there is a long exchange about this polling data being so complicated and so complex and so valuable, and the special counsel is talking about how it was passed off to a man that the fbi has assessed to have ties with russian intelligence. so there are a lot of themes i guess that were resurfaced in this transcript that we talk about in the media often, whether or not there is collusion, does this go to the heart of collusion, was there just a bunch of actors sort of unwittingly having contact with russians. i think this really reaffirmed for a lot of people, that, wow, they're still looking at that core question whether or not there was a quid pro quo to help the trump campaign and relieve sanction. >> and whether parts of that attempted quid pro quo were continuing after the election, which gets you into high crimes. it gets you into what the president is doing as president, not just what happened last -- in the years prior. i wonder what you think what lawyers call the materiality here, the idea that yes that. >> throw the book at everyone, but they had to prove basically that paul manafort's lies were at a higher level than just lies, than just incorrect. >> so is more than just sort of statements that are untrue or statements that are inadvertent and misleading. this is the fact that this is still ongoing that so much has been redacted and so much still talked about means this is going to the upper echelons. and i don't know where that leads, if it leads to person number one, who knows. but it goes deeper than maybe we even appreciate at first. >> i think for viewers sometimes when we report on the little bits we get out of the mueller probe, in a way they're less exciting and they're more carefully phrased than all of this other conversation. and yet they're so much more important, because anyone can write or go on the tv or internet and say oh, maybe there is collusion or it feels like a lot of collusiony things. this isn't that. this is one of their toughest prosecutors weissmann saying under oath that this is still going. i put that to you in contrast of what you hear from some trump defender, and i think some knowledgeable legal folks have been saying this before this new piece, which was well, if this is all they have on roger stone that. >> don't have him on conspiracy. they only have on obstruction. walk us through how this goes seemingly in the other direction. >> so this is robert mueller. i was bay area native for a long time. robert mueller has a great reputation. he is a very, very careful prosecutor. and weissmann is a very careful prosecutor. so building a case like this requires time. it's incremental. it's not just here is a smoking gun and we're done. so we're clearly, carefully building a case, and there will be these little slivers. it doesn't seem like much at all. it's sort of impressionism. when you get up close, you're not sure what seeing. when you step back, ah-ha. >> do you have a painting metaphor for this? >> no, but i'll build on yourself because it's excellent. >> because she is at a really good school. we're just normal pundits here. >> a rap word maybe will come to mind. that's a really good analogy. when you're reading through the transcript they got wasn't until late last year. so they are building this methodically. >> still going. >> a lot of people knocked this probe for being slow and long, but actually, they're continuing to get information that proves to be very valuable. the last thing i would note that is really important in this transcript is the government is out there showing paul manafort not only lied about his contacts with the trump administration, but he continues to lie about his contacts with konstantin kilimnik. >> why do you continue to do that. i'm going to go to eugene robinson. it also raises the question of whether rudy giuliani style is more cubist. >> a giant circle. >> i don't know enough about painting. >> or jackson pollock, just throwing stuff at the wall. >> i tell you what, if we have any viewers who know more about painting than us, or at least than shelby and i, tweet in. >> please, help. >> what is the right painter to describe this probe. my thanks to both of you. as promised, i'm turning to bring in gene robinson to discuss the other big story, trump ally david pecker, the "national enquirer" publisher, we've now learned, this is brand-new, he actually asked the federal government whether his group had to basically register as saudi lobbyists. nbc has confirmed this. enquirer's parent company asked the doj last year whether they had to register as a foreign agent for the saudi presumably because they had this feature celebrating saudi crown prince through their glossy magazine. and the tabloid now is trying to use this as some sort of sweetener to get money from the saudis. the question that keeps coming up is after jeff bezos has tried to allege that also said in that blockbuster unheard of blog post that there was, quote, a saudi angle that was pushing the tabloid to go so hard after bezos. now pecker is breaking his silence. >> the story was given to the "national enquirer" by a reliable source that had given information to the "national enquirer" for seven years prior to this story. it was a source that was well-known to both mr. bezos and ms. sanchez. >> meanwhile, there are sources telling the daily beast that that individual, michael sanchez who is a trump world associate was the brother of bezos' girlfriend, and that he would have given the couples' text to the "national enquirer." i go to eugene robinson, a pull lightser prize winning columnist for "the washington post." i'm also going to play not with sound, but a little visual that you were in "saturday night live" this weekend on this very story. >> yes. >> you can see there without sound, you can see your likeness. how did you feel? >> it's surreal, surreal. and by the way, that's the painting school i think that giuliani is in is surrealism. it's pure daladali. i've never been parodied on "saturday night live" tonight. honored that it was kenan thompson who i think is ridiculously funny. >> very talented cast member there playing you. and as you say, a melting clocks all around for the trump era. that makes sense to me. again, not my area of expertise. there is so much in this story packed in, i caught viewers up here over the weekend on the latest including enquirer's defense here of something that is terrible, no matter what, if as alleged this type of blackmail. their defense is however terrible it may look, it is not the international saudi intrigue that was alleged. you of course affiliated with "the washington post." bezos the owner there. walk us through your view of all of this. >> well, first of all, if you read jeff bezos' blog posts what he describes seems a base attempt at extortion. it has nothing to do with journalism. every time i talk about this, i make it clear. this is not the way journalists work. this is the way mobsters and racketeers work maybe and extortionists, but not journalists. that said, there is this mysterious sort of suggestion of a saudi angle. as you know, "the washington post" has been at odds with mohammed bin salman, the saudi leader over the killing of "washington post" columnist jamal khashoggi. and even before that, the saudis apparently had a thing about the post, not just because of khashoggi, but because of other things "the post" has written about. was this in any sense some sort of proxy fight between bezos and the saudis, or did the saudis see it that way? >> can i raise the obvious here. >> yeah. >> which is not meant to be overly complimentary to you or your colleagues a the poe s s a but here is a brutally murderous regime that does all sorts of things to its own people and human rights as "the post" has documented on khashoggi, and they appear at a minimum very shook and impacted by just the power of the words in the reporting from this paper. >> absolutely. i mean, one thing we've learned about mbs, as he is known, the de facto leader of saudi arabia is that he is really touchy. he is very thin-skinned. and jamal khashoggi got under his skin. "the washington post" got under his skin. just for writing the truth, writing about what he was doing and what his regime was really like. and it was counter to this image he wanted to project. now we don't -- we know that there was this weird relationship between the saudis and david pecker's ami to the point where ami had to inquire whether it should register as a saudi agent. so we know these connections. we just don't know how all the parts worked together, if they all worked together and whether -- that we'll have to find out. >> that part which is new tonight is so bizarre. >> isn't it? >> you know, this is not every day that self-declared media companies check in with the feds to say hey, we might be saudi agents. but, hey, we aren't doing anything that would substantiate that. that's why i think this is another piece of the riddle. and viewers will remember, this is the same law that got people like mike flynn in trouble. this is a law that the feds don't always use, but recently have been willing to. let me read so folks understand for your analysis, the enquirer tells the doj they have this special edition over saudi arabia but they say they didn't get foreign funding, they were not, quote, approached by foreign officials and thus this was a business decision. does that make sense? if all of that is true, why would they be even asking? >> exactly. why would they even ask the question? i've never heard of any media organization asking that question, are we operating as some sort of foreign agent? this is completely new. this is completely alien. but it certainly suggests that they protest too much in this filing, in this question. why would you raise the question if you didn't think there was something more than -- something more than innocent that that relationship. and i don't know the answer to that question. >> right, right. and that is a super intriguing part of this. eugene robinson, as always, thank you for coming on "the beat." >> great to be here, ari. >>> coming up, donald trump plowing all kinds of time into watching television. new schedule leaks showing even more executive time. i'll be joined by sally kohn, making her debut on "the beat" live next. >>> plus, the man called mueller's pit bull andrew weissmann terrifying some defendant, and others saying he goes to far. and trump and beto o'rourke holding duelling rallies near t the border. we will of course talk about the moment at the grammys, michelle obama's big, big surprise appearance. that's later tonight. i'm ari melber. you're watching "the beat" on msnbc. vibration therapy. 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